Chapter 32 #2
A Frosted Tears bloom caught the light near her hand, its petals the same pale blue as the faint marks Sylas had left on her skin after they’d reunited in his den, his nest, his furs.
She brushed her fingers across it, and the flower released a fragrance that wrapped around her senses like silk—sweet and cold and somehow comforting.
“They bloom year-round here,” Sylas said, watching her explore. “Something about the Lux energy in the soil. My mother believed they were a gift from the goddess herself—proof that beauty could survive in hostile places.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s yours.” The words came out rough. “If you want it. A place to breathe when the politics become too much. When I become too much.” His gaze held hers, steady and intense. “I know I’m not easy to be tethered to.”
The honesty of it caught her off guard. She’d grown used to Sylas the King—calculating, commanding, always three moves ahead. This glimpse of something rawer felt like a gift she hadn’t earned.
“Neither am I,” she admitted. “Easy to be tethered to.”
Something shifted in his expression. Through the bond, she felt a pulse of warmth that wasn’t quite hope but wasn’t far from it.
They moved on.
The corridor that led toward the Holy side of the fortress was different from the others—wider, lined with carved reliefs that told stories she couldn’t read and symbols that pulsed with faint Lux energy.
Sylas kept her close here, his hand firm against her back, his presence a wall between her and whatever might emerge from the shadows.
“This is where the priests hold power,” he said, voice low. “Vask’s old territory. The succession is still being decided, but the hierarchy remains. The Church of Lux predates the monarchy. Sometimes they remember that more than I’d like.”
“Is that a warning?”
“It’s context.”
A figure emerged from an alcove ahead.
Tall. Robed in layers of white and silver that caught the corridor’s light and scattered it like crushed diamonds. A Lux Priest—not Vask, who was very thoroughly dead, but another one. Older. With the patient, calculating eyes of someone who’d spent decades learning to wait.
“Alpha King.” The priest inclined his head—barely. His gaze slid to Elsa and stayed there, assessing. “And the human who carries Lux’s blessing.”
Sylas’s hand pressed harder against her spine. Not pushing her behind him—not quite—but making his position clear. “High Priest Oran. I wasn’t aware the council had confirmed your appointment.”
“Acting High Priest.” Oran’s lips curved in something too controlled to be a smile. “Until the formal rites can be completed. I’m sure you understand the necessity of maintaining spiritual continuity in uncertain times.”
The barb landed—Elsa felt Sylas’s anger flare through the bond, sharp and hot before he tamped it down. The “uncertain times” were Sylas’s doing. Vask’s death. The coup he’d crushed with extreme prejudice. The power vacuum that left the priesthood scrambling.
“What do you want, Oran?”
The priest’s attention shifted fully to Elsa. Something in his gaze made her skin prickle—not threat, exactly, but assessment. She was being catalogued. Sorted into whatever framework his theology provided for creatures like her.
“The court has noticed your...companion’s changed status.” Oran’s voice was mild. Carefully, deliberately mild. “No collar. No chain. Walking freely through the fortress at the Alpha King’s side, wearing the colors of his house.”
“I wasn’t aware the Church concerned itself with my wardrobe choices.”
“The Church concerns itself with the spiritual welfare of the realm.” Oran folded his hands inside his sleeves, the picture of priestly patience. “Including the proper observance of rituals that bind our society together. Rituals that cannot be circumvented, even by kings.”
Sylas went very still.
Through the bond, Elsa felt something shift. The warmth that had been building between them since they left his chambers cooled into something harder. Warier.
“Say what you came to say, priest.”
Oran’s gaze flickered between them—cataloguing, calculating. “The human cannot be formally recognized as Luna until the Blood Moon ritual is complete.”
The words dropped into the corridor like stones into still water.
Elsa felt Sylas’s reaction before she processed the priest’s meaning—a surge of protective fury that made the bond sing with tension. Luna. Alpha Queen. The title he’d been circling around since he’d dressed her in his colors and marked her in private.
“The Mating Hunt,” Sylas said flatly. “You’re invoking the Blood Moon chase.”
“I am reminding you that it exists.” Oran’s composure didn’t crack.
“The ritual is sacred. Ancient. It predates your bloodline’s claim to the throne.
A king who wishes to elevate his chosen mate to Luna must prove himself worthy under Lux’s crimson gaze.
” His eyes found Elsa again, and something cold moved in their depths.
“The hunt demonstrates fertility, unity, and dominance. It proves the Alpha can claim his mate and still retain control when the moon sharpens every instinct to its killing edge.”
“I know what it demonstrates.” Sylas’s voice had gone dangerous. “I was raised in this court. I’ve watched three Blood Moon hunts since I came of age.”
“Then you know challengers will be watching.” Oran let the words hang.
“Any sign of weakness—any indication that the Alpha cannot control himself in the presence of his mate—will invite challenges to your rule. The priesthood cannot protect you from that. The ritual exists to ensure our leaders are fit to lead.”
Elsa’s mind raced. A hunt. A ritual chase under a blood-red moon. Sylas would have to track her, catch her, claim her—publicly proving he could maintain control while in the grip of whatever instincts the moon awakened. And if he couldn’t—
She thought of what she’d seen in the training yards. Warriors who’d trained their whole lives to fight. Alphas and near-Alphas who would circle like wolves at any sign of weakness in their king. The political stability Sylas had fought to maintain would crumble overnight if he failed this ritual.
And she would be at the center of it. The human who broke the Alpha King.
“When?” She heard herself ask, and both males turned to look at her.
Oran’s expression shifted—surprise, quickly hidden, at the human speaking unbidden. “Tomorrow night. The Blood Moon rises at sunset. The ritual must be completed before dawn.”
Tomorrow. Less than thirty hours from now, she’d be running through snow while an alien predator king hunted her under a crimson sky.
The bond trembled with the force of Sylas’s reaction—fury at the timing, at the priest’s careful manipulation, at the trap closing around them both. He’d known this was coming. He’d mentioned it last night, promised to explain today. But he’d clearly hoped for more time.
Time the priesthood wasn’t going to give them.
“The ritual chamber will be prepared.” Oran inclined his head again, the gesture more dismissal than respect.
“I trust you’ll ensure your...mate...understands what’s required of her.
” His gaze lingered on Elsa one last moment—measuring, assessing, finding her wanting.
“Running is not optional. Neither is being caught.”
He withdrew into the shadows he’d emerged from, leaving them alone in the corridor with the weight of his ultimatum pressing down.
Silence stretched.
Elsa became aware of Sylas’s breathing—controlled, deliberate, the kind of careful rhythm that meant he was fighting for calm.
Through the bond, she felt the war raging inside him: the part that wanted to chase down Oran and finish what Vask had started, the part that wanted to steal her away to somewhere the rituals couldn’t reach, the part that was calculating angles and consequences and political fallout.
“Tomorrow night,” she said quietly. “That’s the ‘Blood Moon’ you mentioned.”
“Yes.” The word scraped out of him. “I meant to explain properly. To give you time to understand what it would mean. To let you choose whether—”
“Whether I want to be your Luna.”
He turned to face her fully. In the corridor’s dim light, his eyes burned with an intensity that should have been frightening. That would have been frightening, a few weeks ago, before she’d learned to read the meanings beneath his ferocity.
“Whether you want to be hunted,” he said roughly.
“Chased through snow and darkness by something that won’t be entirely me.
The Blood Moon strips control. Sharpens instincts.
Makes the predator more predator than anything else.
” His hand rose to cup her jaw, claws carefully angled away.
“I would never hurt you. But I don’t know if I could stop. ”
“Stop chasing? Or stop when you caught me?”
Something flickered in his expression—surprise at the distinction, maybe, or appreciation for her precision.
“Both. Either.” His thumb traced her cheekbone. “The ritual ends when the Alpha claims his mate. The claiming is...not gentle.”
She thought about what she knew of Yzefrxyl biology. The fangs that could shred armor. The claws that had torn through Vask like wet paper. The possessive, territorial nature that had made him destroy anyone who’d touched her during her captivity.
She thought about the way he’d washed her last night. The reverence in his paws. The careful, methodical gentleness of a predator teaching himself to be something other than deadly.
“And if I don’t run?” she asked. “If I refuse the ritual?”
“Then you can never be Luna. Never hold formal status. Never be protected by anything but my personal claim.” His voice hardened.
“And challengers will circle, waiting for the chance to take you from me through politics or force. The priesthood will never accept you. The court will see you as a weakness I’m too foolish to discard. ”
“But I’d be alive. Unchased. Uncaught.”
“Yes.” The word was barely a breath. “If that’s what you choose, I’ll find another way. I’ll burn down every tradition in this fortress before I let them use you as a pawn.”
The bond pulsed with the truth of it—his willingness to destroy his own kingdom’s foundations if she asked him to. His absolute, terrifying commitment to whatever she decided.
Elsa reached up and covered his paw with hers.
“You said the ritual proves you can control yourself.” She held his gaze. “But you’ve already proven that. To me. Every time you’ve had the chance to hurt me and didn’t. Every time you’ve given me a choice when you could have just taken.”
“The Blood Moon is different—”
“Then show them.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “Show your court, your priests, your challengers. Run me down under the red moon and prove that the beast they’re so afraid of answers to you.”
Sylas stared at her like she’d grown a second head. Through the bond, she felt a cascade of emotions too tangled to separate—disbelief, hope, something fierce and wanting that made her skin prickle with awareness.
“You’d do that.” Not a question. “You’d let me hunt you.”
“I’d let you catch me.” She turned her face into his palm, pressing her lips to the pad of his thumb, feeling the slight roughness of fur against her mouth. “That’s what the ritual’s really about, isn’t it? Not whether you can chase. Whether I’m willing to be caught.”
His breath shuddered out.
Then his hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, and he pulled her close, pressing his forehead to hers the way he had last night, sharing breath and heat and the steady thrum of their bond.
“No one touches you.” The words vibrated against her skin, rough and absolute. “No one takes you. Not even tradition.” His grip tightened, possessive and protective and something else—something that felt like a vow. “You run tomorrow, little human. Run hard. Run fast. Make me earn every step.”
“And when you catch me?”
His answer was a low sound that rumbled through his chest and into hers—not quite a growl, not quite a purr. Something between.
“When I catch you,” he said, “you’ll be Luna. Mine. And anyone who challenges that will learn exactly how gentle I’m capable of being when my mate isn’t in danger.”
The promise hung between them, weighted with everything he wasn’t saying.
Tomorrow night, she would run.
Tomorrow night, he would hunt.
And whatever happened after—whatever the Blood Moon demanded of them both—they would face it together.
Chosen.